The mud is thick here. It clings to your boots like a wet, living thing, pulling at every step you take up the slope. You are walking with him. His name is Silas, though you rarely call him that. You call him Master, or sometimes just Friend, but mostly you say nothing at all. You walk. You climb. The air is thin and tastes of iron and old stone. You have been walking for days. The sun is high, a pale coin in a white sky, but it offers no warmth. It only bleaches the color from the world.

Silas walks ahead of you. His back is straight, even though his knees tremble with every step. He is old. He is the Keeper of the Gate. That is what they called him in the village below, before the fire. Before the silence. Now he is just a man with a staff of black wood and a cloak that looks as if it has been woven from shadows.

You look down at your own hands. They are small. They are red with the cold, though the cold is not the air. It is the road. The road is the enemy. The road is the thing that wants to take you. You grip the strap of your pack. Inside is your book. It is heavy. It is warm. It is the only thing that makes sense.

"Keep moving," Silas says. His voice is low, like gravel shifting under water. He does not look back. He never looks back. To look back is to invite the pull.

"I am moving," you say. Your voice is thin. It sounds like a child’s. You are a child. You are twelve years old, or perhaps thirteen. Time is slippery on this road. "I am trying."

"Trying is not enough," Silas says. "The road does not care if you try. It only cares if you fall."

You fall. Not physically. Not yet. You fall inward. A crack appears in your mind, a hairline fracture running from your ear to your eye. Through the crack, you see the truth. You see the Gate. It is not a door. It is a mouth. And it is hungry.

You stop.

Silas stops.

"Why do we do this?" you ask. The question is dangerous. It is a stone thrown into a still pond. Ripples spread. The mud around your boots seems to deepen.

"Because you are bound," Silas says. "Because you were born to the stone. Because the Gate chose you before you had a name."

"I did not choose this," you whisper.

"No," Silas agrees. "That is the point."

You look at him. His face is a map of lines. His eyes are dark, deep wells with no bottom. You want to hate him. You want to strike him with your staff. You want to turn around and run back to the village, to the smell of bread baking, to the sound of laughter. But you cannot. Your legs are rooted. Your mind is anchored. This is the price. This is the cost of the freedom you think you have.

You have been told that the Gate gives freedom. That if you can reach it, if you can pass through, you will be free. Free from the village. Free from the debt of your blood. Free from the heavy, suffocating weight of your own existence. They told you this in the dark, in the basement of the church, while the priests sang their hollow hymns. They told you that suffering is the path to liberation. They lied. Or perhaps they were telling the truth, and the truth is a knife.

"Look," Silas says. He points his staff forward.

You look. The road ends. The mountain rises up, a jagged tooth of grey rock against the sky. And there, in the center of the rock face, is the Gate. It is a rectangle of darkness. It is wider than it is high. It is made of stone, but the stone is not stone. It is bone. It is the compressed, calcified remains of those who came before you. You can see the shapes in it. Faces. Hands. Eyes, wide open, frozen in a scream that will last forever.

Your heart stops. Then it beats. Once. Twice. A slow, heavy thud, like a drum in a distant room.

"It is beautiful," you say. The words taste like ash.

"It is what it is," Silas says. "Now. You must enter."

"I cannot."

"You must."

"I will not."

Silas turns to you. For the first time, he looks at you. Really looks at you. His expression is not anger. It is not disappointment. It is pity. A deep, crushing pity that makes you want to vomit.

"You are not you," he says softly. "You are the Gate. You have always been the Gate. We are not here to save you. We are here to feed you."

The world tilts. The sky swirls. The mud beneath you rises, curling around your ankles like fingers. You try to run. You try to scream. But your mouth is full of stone. You are becoming the rock. You are becoming the wall. You are becoming the thing that waits.

Silas walks past you. He walks toward the Gate. He does not run. He does not struggle. He walks with the slow, deliberate pace of a man who has already died. He steps into the darkness. The Gate swallows him. The stone closes over him. You see his eyes, one last time. They are closed. He is at peace.

You are alone.

You are the Gate.

You are the Keeper.

You look down at your hands. They are no longer red. They are grey. They are smooth. They are stone. You look at your face. You do not have a face. You have a surface. A texture. A memory of a face, but not the thing itself.

You are free.

You are free from the pain of being a person. You are free from the noise of your own thoughts. You are free from the need for love, for food, for sleep. You are free.

And it is the most terrible thing you have ever felt.

You stand in the center of the rock face. The wind howls around you, but you do not feel it. The rain falls on you, but you do not get wet. The sun shines on you, but you do not warm. You are fixed. You are eternal. You are the thing that watches.

Years pass. Or perhaps centuries. Time is a concept for those who change. You do not change. You are the constant. The anchor. The stone.

One day, a child comes.

She is small. She is walking up the slope. She has a pack on her back. She is tired. Her eyes are red. She is crying.

She looks at you. She looks at the Gate. She looks at the darkness in the center of the rock.

"Who are you?" she asks. Her voice is small. It is the same voice you had. The same voice that asked *Why do we do this?*

You cannot answer. You have no voice. You have no mouth. You are the wall. You are the stone. You are the silence.

But you know what she is. You know what she carries. You know the weight of her book. You know the lie they told her. You know the price.

You want to tell her to turn back. You want to tell her to run. You want to tell her that there is no freedom here, only a cage made of eternity. You want to scream. You want to beg. You want to be her. You want to be the one walking up the slope, with the mud on her boots and the fear in her heart. You want to be human again.

But you are the Gate.

And the Gate does not speak.

The Gate waits.

The Gate watches.

The Gate consumes.

You look at her. You look into her eyes. You see the same hunger. The same despair. The same broken hope.

You are her.

You were always her.

And she will be you.

The wind howls. The rain falls. The sun shines.

You stand.

You wait.

You are free.

You are free.

You are free.

The child stops. She looks at you. She sees the stone. She sees the faces in the stone. She sees you.

She knows.

She does not run.

She walks forward.

She steps into the darkness.

The stone closes over her.

You are alone.

You are the Gate.

You are the Keeper.

You are free.